It's more the fact that I don't know enough about different radio manufactures and different people's 3rd party applications to know within a couple of seconds of reading a post that the stuff isn't freely avaliable to anyone (and sometimes you can't find the licenses publicly avalible online quickly... and even then... find a lawyer to read through some of them).

Since this board covers a variety of different products all using different software, it is something that I figured it's better to be a bit more broad than to simply guess, and see what happens. I'd rather be a sticker than someone who just avoids the subject all together.

I do know that those 3 sites are publicly avaliable, and the sofware on there is usually GNU Public License, or some derivitive thereof.

Those of us who come from the computer/networking world are used to free and readily available hardware drivers, firmware and manuals so we enter the radio world assuming that since these are electronic devices similar to video cards, motherboards or routers that the software/firmware and manuals for radios are free and readily available.

Turns out they are not.

It is hard for me to understand why the radio manufactures do not put all of their manuals on web the way Cisco does.

First of all, the amateur radio companies by and large do - it is only the commercial and public safety manufacturers that don't.

Why not?

1) Risk of interference: the last thing Motorola, Kenwood, Icom, Tait, or anybody else want is for some whacker to be able to get a radio and reprogram it onto a police system and cause trouble - hence why programming software is so hard to come by.

2) FCC regulations: to be accepted for the Public Safety, Business, or other areas, there are strict rules about what the end user of the radio can do to the radio. Let the programming be too easy, and they could lose their FCC approval for the radios. Again, there is a big difference between the Amateur service and commercial radios.

3) Profit.

If you have questions on the IFR COM-120[ABC] or 2975, I designed them. If you want manuals, calibration information, or pricing information, please contact Aeroflex directly.